The UK has some of the richest fishing waters
in the world.
But while the nation has left the European Union,
that doesn't mean Europe's fishing fleets
are leaving British seas.
And now, local fishermen are disappointed
that foreign vessels will still get a good chunk
of their fish for years, and maybe even forever.
And it's all because of the recent Brexit trade deal
that the UK prime minister is calling a win.
And for the first time since 1973,
we will be an independent coastal state
with full control of our waters.
But beyond the headlines, the real story is
that the deal falls short
of the promises made to Britain's fishing communities.
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Boris the betrayer has completely sold us down the river.
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bring in the largest amount of fish in the UK
and export the majority of it.
But it's a tough job.
It's by its nature challenging,
risky, dangerous, unpredictable.
The fishing port of Newlyn is closer
to the French coast than it is to London.
And the fishermen here have been competing for decades
with fleets from the other side of the English Channel.
Large, powerful, modern vessels fishing
alongside the fleet here for coastal communities.
So really that unfair competition,
that constant fishing pressure
in our coastal zone, will continue.
And it's not great at all for fish or fishermen.
It all started in the '70s,
when the UK signed the Common Fisheries Policy
as part of its membership of the EU.
It meant that our fishing industry declined.
At the moment in the EU,
we only get to fish about half of the fish in our waters.
The rest was set aside for European countries.
The UK's coastal communities thought
that leaving the EU would give them more control
over British waters,
and that's why more than 90%
of fishermen voted in favor of Brexit.
They were happy to use us for their campaign,
and when push has come to shove, we've had the shove.
And we've been dumped on from a great height.
Under the new deal,
EU boats will still be allowed to fish in UK waters,
but the amount of fish they can catch
will be reduced over the next five years.
And of course ideally, you know, the transition period
of five years, five and a half years,
that we're entering now would have been shorter.
We wanted just three, but the European Union wanted 14.
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that the European Union was insisting on.
Prime Minister Johnson asked the EU
to give them 80% of the total value of their catch
from UK waters, but instead, they settled on 25%.
Fishermen were also hoping there would be more limits
on where foreign vessels could go.
That didn't happen either.
EU boats will still
be allowed to fish up to 6 miles off the UK coast.
Some believe that Johnson compromised
because the sector contributes only about 0.1% to the GDP.
It may be a very small part
of the economy overall,
but actually to coastal communities,
it's often the only game in town.
Still, fishermen say the industry was used
as a bargaining chip in a larger Brexit trade deal.
And if they just were honest and just said
to the industry, look, we got a good deal for the country,
but we had to sacrifice fishing to do it —
if they'd just come out and said this,
instead of trying to make it that they've got a good deal,
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Meanwhile, EU fishermen like Bruno Margolle
of France are relieved.
The French fisherman makes 80% of his summer earnings
from casting his net in UK waters,
pulling in whiting, mackerel, and squid.
Relief was also palpable in his port of Boulogne-sur-Mer,
which is Europe's largest seafood processing center.
I'm not going to say we're happy.
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Definitely relieved.
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What's going to happen?
What are we going to be able to do?
Even with this deal,
the future looks uncertain for both sides.
The UK can actually withdraw the EU's access
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on the UK's seafood exports to the EU,
and that could end up hurting
the fishing industry even more.
When you read the small print,
we will never get it back.
And the fact now, we're worse off than before Brexit,
because it's all written in
that we won't be able to get it back.